I think a lot of us are underestimating the size

Germanviking86

Ok when I saw the images, I was impressed.After a while of looking, I noticed the door. Anyone who has been to it know that the entryway to the statue is f*cking huge. Which makes me think of one thing. Is the city bigger than we think it is. Will we be able to go on top of the empire state building and throw someone off. Did rockstar make the city look small in the trailer only so they could shock us with its real scale? I mean most of the scenes they showed us in the trailer were from that of the skyline and the pier. They didn't actually show us the streets of downtown manhattan.

PhillOS

-What door?-They showed us Times Square (answers your streets of Manhattan Question)-They confirmed rooftop action (perhaps throwing people off tall buildings)-Some buildings will be accessible (but at what extent is unknown)-DH confirmed the size to be just about the size of SA (no surprises im sorry)-Have you been living under a rock? (you must have...)

Germanviking86

-What door?-They showed us Times Square (answers your streets of Manhattan Question)-They confirmed rooftop action (perhaps throwing people off tall buildings)-Some buildings will be accessible (but at what extent is unknown)-DH confirmed the size to be just about the size of SA (no surprises im sorry)-Have you been living under a rock? (you must have...)

-the statue of liberty doorway, that opening right above it

-but they didn't give us a good perspective

-WOOHOO!!

-I wanna ride a car out of a building and watch it explode once it hits the ground

-something tells me manhattan is going to be the size of san fierro all the way down to the village below mt. chiliad

-Nope, I just had an idea. Maybe if you started accepting ideas and building off them maybe you would have something. In the predicting process, any point is valid.

MIKEY GTA

Phillos i guarantee that Liberty city will be a bit bigger than rockstar are letting on. And there will be tons of surpirises which know 1 knows about yet, also they didnt really show us any street scenes that give us a good idea of the scale of the city. p.s Dont bother saying its a teaser so there not going to show much i know that

Harlemite

It will be somewhere in between LS (Red County) size and all of SA. I have pretty much confirmed that HERE in the first "Quote analysis".

Now you may have additional questions such as:

"But they said that there not even finished with it yet". That's true, but after reading my thread over there, and then considering that they lay the map out fully and then build up from there, it becomes clear that it must be between LS and all of SA size.

Also you should consider the fact that when DH was asked about geo-size, he completely avoided the question by saying "I don't like to think in those terms" and "It would be impossible for us, at this point in time, to make a huge game [like SA] and still make it with the level of detail that we're going for with IV". he also said in that same interview with OXM that DETAIL and VERTICALITY is the big thing this time.

On the verticality tip, since DH has opted to talk about it so much instead of geo-size, that is the reason why I started up the Say it with me. "Verticality!" thread.

And finally, even if by some miracle it turns out that IV will be as big or bigger than SA, wouldn't it be a very pleasant surprise?

Johnny Burbank

I don't see how you can fit four boroughs plus a likeness of New Jersey into a small map. The maximum in-game distances alone we have seen are about one mile (the most recent pic of the train looking off toward Manhattan, from nearest corner to farthest corner).

Like I have said in Harlemite's prior thread, the map has to be at least one-half the size of San Andreas and probably more. I would think each borough has to be at least one square mile just to fit in all the unique features and qualities of the place, including waterline.

farrugia

If IV was even slightly close to San Andreas in terms of geographical size they ( )would have been jumping up and down on their armchairs trying to let us know. Remember the fuss they made since the very first days regarding how huge SA was going to be? We've seen no such attempts here. On the other hand what we have seen is Dan Houser derailing countless interviews and refusing to pinpoint a definite geographical area. It's obvious that they think that if that fact (Liberty City << SA) is made public before the gamers are fully hyped up by the other aspects of the game (body physics, graphics) then they'll lose some fan-boys' cash.

IMO, Liberty City is about the size of Red County.

at Burbank: No you don't have to. Just eliminate a number of non-landmark buidings and rearrange the geography to fit more recognisable buildings per game square mile than in the real NY. Don't forget that the landmarks in LC will be smaller than their real-life counterparts (Houser said that) so they will occupy less space.

Johnny Burbank

If IV was even slightly close to San Andreas in terms of geographical size they ( )would have been jumping up and down on their armchairs trying to let us know. Remember the fuss they made since the very first days regarding how huge SA was going to be? We've seen no such attempts here. On the other hand what we have seen is Dan Houser derailing countless interviews and refusing to pinpoint a definite geographical area. It's obvious that they think that if that fact (Liberty City << SA) is made public before the gamers are fully hyped up by the other aspects of the game (body physics, graphics) then they'll lose some fan-boys' cash.

IMO, Liberty City is about the size of Red County.

at Burbank: No you don't have to. Just eliminate a number of non-landmark buidings and rearrange the geography to fit more recognisable buildings per game square mile than in the real NY. Don't forget that the landmarks in LC will be smaller than their real-life counterparts (Houser said that) so they will occupy less space.

The landmarks may be shorter than the real-life counterparts (didn't Houser say they wouldn't have 100-story buildings? The real Empire State Building (ESB) is 100 stories). But in terms of width I don't see why they wouldn't be the same. The ESB in person is surprisingly narrow. The Statue of Liberty is pretty small too relative to what people may expect.

And since width would be similar, I think land distances will be pretty big. Width or planar distance is critical to the GTA series to evoke immersion. Verticality is less critical. If you don't see at least a few blocks of skyscrapers, then there is no sense of being there. If you don't see trees and hills for a good and long distance, then there is no immersion. Plus, there will be a mock up of Central Park, itself pretty large; even if they mock-up of it is small it will still have to cram in the various landmarks to create an immersive setting.

Already, we are seeing distances of about one mile just between Broker and Manhattan (Algonquin?).

When I visulaize LC I see it as about the top or bottom half of the entire map of San Andreas, plus maybe some more.

farrugia

Burbank, you would be right were it not for the fact that Houser repeatedly ignored land area to focus on verticality. It makes no marketing sense to have a low self esteem, so they are not underselling GTA on purpose. Which means that GTA is geographically smaller than you think. Red County on its own is pretty large if you think about it and imagine it as a whol urban zone, I wouldn't be disappointed.

soleil, I believe you are a bit on the extreme side, but I'm in your side of the debate.

Johnny Burbank

My prediction: the map of GTA IV will let us go farther up into the sky than it will let us go in any direction across the ground.

No way. Houser already said there won't be 100-story buildings (or something like that, I think he said 50-story). The tallest buildings in the world are like 1/4 mile, whereas that is only a few city blocks. Plus, there are no planes so no need to model more than maybe twice the height of the tallest building.

If each borough is about 1-mile-square, then that is 5 square miles. Plus some waterways to break them up. I figure the XY plane at half the size of San Andreas, give or take, by a Z-plane of 1/2 mile.

Johnny Burbank

Burbank, you would be right were it not for the fact that Houser repeatedly ignored land area to focus on verticality. It makes no marketing sense to have a low self esteem, so they are not underselling GTA on purpose. Which means that GTA is geographically smaller than you think. Red County on its own is pretty large if you think about it and imagine it as a whol urban zone, I wouldn't be disappointed.

soleil, I believe you are a bit on the extreme side, but I'm in your side of the debate.

I think the "shyness" on R*'s part is not that the game will be small but that it will be smaller than S.A. I think that fact alone is something they are trying to downplay only because the GTA series has gotten bigger with each sequel. So they don't want to have to defend their new take on this where the game is in fact smaller than their last game. Put yourself in their shoes:

Reporter Question: We have seen the worlds of GTA increase in size form iteration to iteration, with S.A. encompassing an entire state. We are now in the next gen. Some gamers and bloggers have speculated that GTA4 would now span an entire continent. How large will LC be?

R*: .....we are focusing on verticality and density..... the game in terms of land mass will be smaller than San Andreas because we are filling up all the dead space with fully interactive features, we are adding interiors, etc.

I think R* is appearing "defensive" or shy only because people could interpret the fact that L.C. being smaller than S.A. means R* is not living up to expectations, etc. So they want to take the emphasis off land mass and put it on new things, like new interactions, more interior spaces, more realism, etc.

And like I have said, the next game - say GTA5 - will be the one where they expand the land size a lot. Once they have all the hard work done and the programming and engine design, which they wil with GTA4, then it's a matter of expanding on that.

I hope that what he's saying is true, but if not then oh well. Although I honestly don't see how they're going to fit Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and part of New Jersey in a map that's smaller than San Andreas. I know that not each borough is going to mimic the real life counterpart in terms of size and scope. I'd estimate a map about the same size as San Andreas.

Edit: Also, there's this:

"The Liberty City of GTA IV is a completely different city from the one we saw in GTA 3 for PlayStation 2. First of all, it is much larger: approximately as large as the entire state of San Andreas, as I said before. Moreover, it is not based on Manhattan alone, but also includes the bordering boroughs. As is Rockstar’s tradition, even if it is based on a true city like New York, Liberty City remains a product of fantasy and for this reason the names of its boroughs have been transformed or reviewed. The areas where we will live the adventure of GTA IV are Broker (Brooklyn), Duke (Queens), Bohan (Bronx), Algonquìn (Manhattan), Alderney (New Jersey)."

Vanilla Shake

this picture alone shows that the game has a significant size, and of cause its just a view of a skyline, but its big.

If you look closely, that is just the southern tip of manhattan

Yeah, but what you must realize is that in real life New York, the Empire State Building is much farther back, more towards the middle of Manhattan, hence why it's in the district we like to call 'Midtown'. Either Rockstar has changed things around to go along with the gameplay better, or we are seeing a condensed version of Manhattan in this picture. Christ, for all we know this could be all of Algonquin...

Harlemite

Let me just say something. I'm from NY. I'm right here in Manhattan. I looked through the articles, analysed the quotes and gawked at the trailer.

From the quotes and semantical signals from R*, I KNOW it is smaller than SA and I know it is closer to that of LS (red county). But farrugia explained it best when he said that R* would be jumping up and down on their armchairs to let us know, if it was indeed as big as all SA, which it simply isn't. the proof is there sir.

Also, like I said, I'm right here in Manhattan and I know NY (most of NY) like the back of my hand. And let me tell you, when i saw the trailer there were quite a few things that made me shrug my shoulders. First, in the trailer it shows the E. state bldg a few blocks away from the Brooklyn (Broker) bridge. The E. state bldg is nowhere near the Brooklyn bridge in real life!!! And the same is true for all the other landmarks they had. They got it all crammed together so it will all fit. So finally, and to point out something farrugia didn't quite do, THE NEW L.C. WILL BE BETWEEN THE SIZE OF THE RED CIRCLE AND BLUE CIRCLE SEEN BELOW. But definitely closer to the red one. Thank you:

But don't sweat this thing people. it's still going to be massively detailed and graphically advanced and still be VERY big for one city. So stop worrying about it.

Edit: And you gotta think, they'll make it appear even larger than it actually is considering that they'll be separating the boroughs (and NJ) with many waterways. So, again, don't worry about it!

brucewayne909

I'd rather have SA graphics with a bigger map but that's just me. The graphics don't offer more playing time the way new areas do. But I'm fine with LC since I live in NYC and I'm really anxious to see how this will turn out.